A genetic study of snails, combined with other factors, suggests a migration of Mesolithic peoples from the Pyrenees to Ireland.

A recent study of the mitochondrial DNA of the Cepaea nemoralis land snail, a snail curiously common only between Ireland and the Pyrenees region of Southern France, has led researchers to conclude the possibility that ancient Mesolithic people carried the fauna with them in a migration from the French region to Ireland about 8,000 years ago.

This correlates with studies of human genetics and the colonization of Ireland, according to the research* published June 19 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Angus Davison and colleagues from the University of Nottingham, UK.

Ireland and this region of France are thousands of miles apart.

Says Davison, "There is a very clear pattern, which is difficult to explain except by involving humans. If the snails naturally colonized Ireland, you would expect to find some of the same genetic type in other areas of Europe, especially Britain. We just don't find them."

Moreover, he adds, "There are records of Mesolithic or Stone Age humans eating snails in the Pyrenees, and perhaps even farming them. The highways of the past were rivers and the ocean  as the river that flanks the Pyrenees was an ancient trade route to the Atlantic, what we're actually seeing might be the long lasting legacy of snails that hitched a ride, accidentally or perhaps as food, as humans travelled from the South of France to Ireland 8,000 years ago."

*Grindon AJ, Davison A (2013) Irish Cepaea nemoralis Land Snails Have a Cryptic Franco-Iberian Origin That Is Most Easily Explained by the Movements of Mesolithic Humans. PLoS ONE 8(6): e65792. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0065792

GUARD #1: Where’d you get the coconut?
ARTHUR: We found them.
GUARD #1: Found them? In Mercea? The coconut’s tropical!
ARTHUR: What do you mean?
GUARD #1: Well, this is a temperate zone.
ARTHUR: The swallow may fly south with the sun or the house martin
or the plumber may seek warmer climes in winter yet these are not
strangers to our land.
GUARD #1: Are you suggesting coconuts migrate?

I suscribe to the theory (which...ahem...I must say in all modesty that I just made up)that the escargot eating Frogs simply followed the snails as they migrated north (at a snail’s pace of course)after the Ice Age.

After all, no one has ever produced evidence of ‘snail transporting equipment’ with which the Frenchies would have carried the snails north.

23
posted on 06/23/2013 7:59:25 AM PDT
by wildbill
(You're just jealous because the Voices talk only to me.)

Wait a minute! I read an article here about a year ago that said that DNA research showed that the Irish were descended from the Germans. So now, on Saint Patricks Day, we all have to drink green beer and eat bratwurst with escargot?

25
posted on 06/23/2013 8:16:39 AM PDT
by blueunicorn6
("A crack shot and a good dancer")

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